Editor's Note: Minutes received 7/28 CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Alan Emtage/Bunyip and Peter Deutsch/Bunyip Minutes of the Internet Anonymous FTP Archives Working Group (IAFA) The Minutes of the San Diego meeting were accepted as read. The Site Administrator's Draft Document has now been split into two parts by the authors. It was agreed that this was appropriate and the change endorsed. Document 1 describes the procedure for setting up and maintaining an anonymous FTP archive site. Document 2 describes a list of templates which may be used by anonymous FTP archive sites to distribute information about the site itself as well as data and services served by that site. A detailed discussion of the current drafts of the two new documents was conducted. o Questions about the examples used in the second document were raised due a possible perception of ``UNIX bias'' in the current draft. The general consensus was that those individuals wishing to perform the exercise of constructing appropriate templates for other operating systems should do so and contribute them for incorporation into the final document. However, it was considered that the current draft was adequate for the purpose. o It was agreed that a section on ``Packaging for Delivery'' was needed, which would explain the various compressing, archiving and other packaging techniques now in use on the Internet. This will include (but not be limited to) UNIX tar and compress, Mac BINHEX, etc. formats. A draft of this section will be inserted for the next draft. It was agreed that the section on ``ethics'' and ``illegal'' practices such as storing copyrighted material without proper release, etc. should be strengthened and split recognizing however, that the definition of ``illegal'' may vary widely between different jurisdictions. Administrators should be encouraged to check for the rules, laws and regulations governing their own environment. A disclaimer on liability was also suggested. Following up on a suggest made at the last meeting in San Diego, it was agreed that a section on ``Other recommended tools for archive administrators'' should be added. This will provide a brief overview of other information tools now available on the Internet with care taken not to ``endorse'' any specific project. This will also be added for the next draft. It was agreed that, given the quick progress being made on Uniform Resource Locators (URL), Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI) and Uniform 1 Resource Serial Numbers (URSN) (with work coming out of the UDI BOF and probable Working Group), that fields to accommodate these be added to the appropriate templates in Document 2. It was agreed that more work needs to be done on the ``Why you should run an archive'' section of the first document. Ellen Hoffman of Merit (ellen_hoffman@merit.edu) has volunteered her site to coordinate submissions of Services records (as defined in the second document) until services directories start to become widely available. It was agreed that an additional field ``Sponsoring Organization:'' should be added to support this sort of ``proxy-list'' service. No agreement was reached on the the issue of developing a ``cost daemon'' program for ranking the distance or reachability of an archive from a particular user's host, although there was some interest in the idea. Peter Deutsch (peterd@bunyip.com) will act as coordinator for Volunteers interested in working on such a project. Questions were asked about a recommended procedure for registering new information sites as they come on-line. Currently they are discovered through ad hoc methods such as a posting to comp.archives.admin, email to an archie site, etc. It was agreed that this should be noted in the first document, advising new sites to post their availability to comp.archives and other avenues for the distribution of this information should be pursued. In discussing the section on security, it was pointed out that a number of sites continue to run anonymous FTP archives to exchange non-public information. Such sites function without password protection and the information so stored is publicly available via the standard anonymous FTP login procedure. It was agreed that a strengthened section on security would specifically warn against this practice, as it constitutes a form of ``security through obscurity'' that is not endorsed and which has already been shown to be problematic in practice. The subject of a companion ``User Guide to Anonymous FTP'' was again raised and it was again agreed that such a document would be useful. Ellen Hoffman of Merit (ellen_hoffman@merit.edu) and April Marine of SRI (april@nisc.sri.com) have agreed to examine a number of current freely available documents with the intention of editing them to make them suitable for a more general audience. In a general discussion on missing attributes in various templates, it was suggested that the following be considered: o In templates describing textural information a field to list the ISO standard encoding for language and character set should be added. o In templates describing documents (such as IAFA-ABSTRACT) a field 2 listing the ISBN number (if available) should be considered. o Where appropriate, fields to list appropriate ``Distribution:'' and ``Copying:'' fields should be added. o Additional available contact information such as FAX numbers should be added. New Business It was agreed that work should begin on documenting URIs, UDIs and URSNs. It was agreed that the chairs in concert with Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (timbl@nxoc01.cern.ch) would canvas the Area Directors for User Services and Applications to determine whether IAFA should play a role in this, or new/additional Working Groups should be tasked with the job. It was agreed that there might be interest in a document explaining tools intended to coordinate sharing of information across the Internet. These might include existing tools or look at specifications to encourage new tools. A summary of such tools will be investigated and a concrete proposal prepared for the next meeting. Attendees Mark Baushke mdb@cisco.com Pravin Bhagwat w2pravin@watson.ibm.com George Brett ghb@jazz.concert.net Mitchell Charity mcharity@lcs.mit.edu Jodi-Ann Chu jodi@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu James Conklin jbc@bitnic.educom.edu Daniel Dern ddern@world.std.com Peter Deutsch peterd@cc.mcgill.ca Alan Emtage bajan@cc.mcgill.ca Jill Foster jill.foster@newcastle.ac.uk Jim Fullton jim_fullton@unc.edu Joan Gargano jcgargano@ucdavis.edu James Halpin halpin@turkey.sw.stratus.com Alisa Hata hata@cac.washington.edu Ellen Hoffman ellen_hoffman@um.cc.umich.edu Lenore Jackson jackson@nsinic.gsfc.nasa.gov Sylvain Langlois Sylvain.Langlois@der.edf.fr Thomas Lenggenhager lenggenhager@switch.ch Hock-Koon Lim lim@po.cwru.edu Kim Long klong@sura.net April Marine april@nisc.sri.com Ed Menze menze@cs.arizona.edu Charlotte Mooers mooers@nnsc.nsf.net Chris Myers chris@wugate.wustl.edu Clifford Neuman bcn@isi.edu Hank Nussbacher hank@vm.tau.ac.il Bob Page bob.page@eng.sun.com 3 Rakesh Patel rapatel@hardees.rutgers.edu Michael Patton map@lcs.mit.edu Marsha Perrott mlp+@andrew.cmu.edu Mel Pleasant pleasant@cs.rutgers.edu Mark Prior mrp@itd.adelaide.edu.au David Reiser dsr@codex.prds.cdx.mot.com Robert Reschly reschly@brl.mil Joyce K. Reynolds jkrey@isi.edu Karen Roubicek roubicek@faxon.com Anthony Rutkowski amr@sprint.com Henry Sanders henrysa@microsoft.com Richard Schmalgemeier rgs@merit.edu Tim Seaver tas@concert.net Vincent Sgro sgro@cs.rutgers.edu Erik Sherk sherk@sura.net Michael Slocombe slocombe@bbn.com Jane Smith jds@jazz.concert.net Karen Sollins sollins@lcs.mit.edu Simon Spero ses@cmns.think.com Marten Terpstra terpstra@ripe.net Chris Weider clw@merit.edu Moira West mjw@cert.org Evan Wetstone evan@rice.edu Scott Williamson scottw@nic.ddn.mil Yung-Chao Yu yy@qsun.att.com 4